323 SOURCES OF POWER

heat did not begin until about 1860, nor for power until near the end of
the century. Among the world's important fuels petroleum and natural
gas arc (1) the most easily obtained, (2) the most easily distributed, (3) the
most varied in their uses, and (i) trie most easily exhausted: They are
| easily obtained because, wrien holes are drilled in the deep-seated rocks
\vhcre^tKey accumulate, the prpstlre^causes thcnTto well up. Otten oil
and gas^gusrT out so^violently that the well-drilling tools rly high in the
air, and the flow cannot be checked for days, or even months. Such
"gushers" sometimes take fire. When oil was struck at the San Bocas
well in the Tampico oilfield of Mexico in 1908 the oil that gushed out
caught fire from the drilling engine. It burned 57 days, consuming
175,000 barrels of oil a day, and wasting material worth $3,000,000. The
flame was 800 to 1,400 feet high and gave so much light that a newspaper
could be read by it at night 17 miles away. Such a well, when properly
capped, is worth thousands of dollars a day.

When such huge returns are possible from the insignificant labor of
drilling a well, it isnot surprising that the search for oil has been carried
onjwkh^he saru&^agerness as "that for gold.. When new oil territory is
opened, prospectors rush in to get hold of the best sites, and there is all the
reckless excitement, quarreling, and trickery which occur during stam-
pedes for gold. The first days of the California and Texas oilfields, for
example, were marred by great lawlessness.

(2) Why Petroleum Can Easily Be Transported. Petroleum can be
transported^chsa^ly^because it Jgn^ be pumpedjnto lankcars prtank
steamers as easily as water. It can also be driven through pipes for Kun-

ofmilcs. thus givingit an extremely cheap mode of transportation,
iprtmestoday run notonly fronPthe oilfields in PennsylvaSia^and
Illinois to New York, but also from Oklahoma to Chicago. JjX-Asiatic
J&3|ssia a pipe line runs from thejgeat Baku^oilficld^pn the Caspian Sea
toBatum^ on^thejlack SeaT~Qthers carry oil from Irak to the Mediter-
jrangan*-

(3) The Use of Natural Gas. Thejwaste of naturalgas has been far
greater Aanthat^of petroleum. In Pennsyhania^the gas which usually
accompanies petroleum was long ago led into pipes and utilized for cook-
ing, lighting, heating, and other purposes. It supplied the Pittsburgh
region and other sections of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio with
very cheap fuel for many years. Almost every house used it. Inmore
remote oilfields,Jbowever, the natural gas was mosdy wasted until about
192?. The local market tor it was so small that it did not seerrT worth
while to bother with it. Then the owners of oilfields suddenly awoke to
the fact that gas can^bc^transported long distances by jjipej|&ics even
mgr^facapIyThanjoiL At first it is carried along by the pressure"oiTtJic